Storing enbrel | Arthritis Information

On a long trip, how would you store your enbrel vaccine, say driving for 8 hours or taking the plane for a similar number of hours?

i haven't had too much luck with transporting enbrel. the soft pack coolers definately dont work for more that 2 or 3 hours. if you are traveling by car you can stop and get ice so its no problem, but on the plane it always seems to get warm. even if you make it to your destination, then you travel to the hotel and no refer! (if you stay in the cheap hotels like i do). and the ice bucket really doesnt work! melts sometime in the middle of the night...then you are dosing some warm hamster cells that do you no good.

if you are only traveling for a week you can double dose before you go and when you get back...you have to ask your doc about this - to see if it is ok for you.

Enbrel does not need to be kept cold all the time. I have actually had an enbrel nurse tell me this. As long as it does not get warm or hot it is totally fine. I found this out because I was going camping for a week and the nurse told me it was fine to just take my enbrel with me with an ice-pack. If your ice bucket melts, your cooler pack de-frosts, your ice-pack doesn't stay frozen etc... it will still be cold enough to keep your enbrel safe for the rest of the day or until the next day. My doctor wants me to NEVER miss a dose. If anything, I will inject a day early or a day late.

If i was to travel in the car, go camping for a few nights, go in an airplaine etc, I would wrap my enbrel syrynge in a plastic bag, put it in a towel and into a hard sided cooler with an ice-pack or two. I wouldn't open the cooler until I was ready to inject or had a refrigerator to put it into. The cooler would stay cool enough as long as it was not in direct sunlight.
Thank you all for your responses on storing enbrel. I took a shot one day early before my travel. I went by plane. It takes 3 hours to check in to the airport, 3-4 hours flying (or more) and another 1-2 hours to get luggage and get to the hotel. One certainly will need a cooler then. I wonder why they don't produce a compact cooler just for these vaccines?

Any more updates on this from experienced travelers?